The black Lincoln had its left front wheel stuck deep in the mud. McCabe insisted on doing everything herself. I was there only to drive the Land Rover. “Keep them warm,” she said, throwing her coat over my feet. She quickly chained one vehicle to the other, back to back, and wedged a piece of wood under the Lincoln’s sunken front tire. Both the chain and the wedge came from the Lincoln’s trunk. McCabe sat on its driver’s seat and signaled me to start the Land Rover. After a few pulls failed to dislodge the car, McCabe asked me to trade places with her. “I’m too heavy,” she said. She did seem taller and wider than before, but that could have been the effect of heavy winter clothes. The Lincoln had D.C. restricted-zone plates. Inside, it smelled like apples. The registration in the glove compartment listed McCabe as the owner, at a Dupont Circle address. She rapped on the glass. I lowered the car window. “You can look at that later,” she said, evenly. McCabe never got angry. That was her advantage. Before I could say I was sorry, she was striding back to the Land Rover. McCabe always fled ahead of my apologies. The Lincoln was freed on the second try.
The Washington, D.C. restricted zone was the last place on earth I would have associated with McCabe. With his tall tale, Rafael had uncovered fear behind my cynical loathing of the place. I was shamefully afraid of our rulers. That is why I pretended all my life that they did not exist. McCabe was powerful, but she was not one of them. She had taken care of me, who was planning to kill her. Her goodness was beyond doubt. It was also inexplicable. Would McCabe have helped Rafael? A logical question I should have asked myself. I didn’t. It was as if he inhabited a different plane. Someone of McCabe’s caliber could have a car registered in the D.C. restricted zone for any number of business reasons. Nevertheless, I wished I had brought the Mauser with me.
McCabe agreed to drive to the last vestiges of the Great Prairie. The moon was now out. We might see swift foxes hunting for rabbits. First we drove back to the house. While she waited outside in the Lincoln, which she insisted on taking, I parked the Land Rover in the garage. Inside the maid’s room, Rafael had fallen asleep fully clothed. He was snoring. Saliva trickled from one corner of his open mouth. I wrapped him in a blanket just as I wrapped the Mauser. The extra bullet went into my pants pocket. McCabe followed me with her eyes as I placed the bundle on the back seat. Unasked, she moved to the passenger seat. “I’ll drive so you can see the landscape,” I said, redundantly. She nodded. McCabe was always kind to me. The roads had been freshly plowed, and traffic was light, so we got to the prairie’s ancient edge in less than an hour. The moon shone brightly on the snowy flatlands. McCabe leaned forward in her seat, glancing left and right the way people do at tennis matches. There was nothing to see other than endless snow and sky. Yet she radiated excitement. I told her the names of the different prairie grasses and flowers, and the seasons in which they appeared. “You should see this in the spring, when cardinal flowers lap at the clumps of bluestem grass; it’s like a sea on fire,” I rhapsodized, forgetting time was running out for her. “I can see it,” she said. My words were that vivid. Flattered, I described for her the martyred prairie dogs, poisoned, torched, gassed, drowned, or quartered by the government and military farmers, and the near-extinct black-footed ferret, whose main meal had been prairie-dog meat. We were silent for several miles. Then she said, “When are you going to write again?” I stopped the car, ran out into a field, and threw up in the snow. My mouth stank. I cleaned it with fresh snow. When I got back, McCabe was not in the car. The motor was running but the headlights were off. The Mauser was still in the back seat. McCabe was standing on the opposite side of the road, about fifty feet away, her back toward me. I grabbed the rifle and walked toward her. When I was about twenty feet away, I stopped, aimed the rifle at her, and called her name. She did not turn around. I called her again. She remained still. I cocked the rifle and called her a third time. She turned around and faced me. It started snowing again, softly. We were there for a long time, facing each other, until my shoulders hurt and I lowered the gun. She let me reach the car and wrap the gun in the blanket, before she started walking back and got inside. “I’m hungry,” she said, as she shut her door.
On our drive back, McCabe mentioned that Constantinople had fallen to the Caliphate shortly before dawn, which was around midnight in Elmira. The city was in ruins. Its inhabitants slaughtered. The Emperor and the Patriarch, executed. All foreign military and civilians safely airlifted. Total war had begun worldwide. I did not believe her. I never could tell with McCabe’s deadpan. Its flatness could hide many meanings, or none. Before she left, I had decided that she always meant what she said, literally. That’s how much I had ended up trusting her. Driving now through the ghostly Great Prairie toward the glow on the horizon that was Elmira, I was both sure that she was lying and ashamed to doubt her. “What are you going to do now?” I said, just to break my shamed silence. I must have looked like a clown out on that field with my shoulders shaking under the weight of a World War I gun. At least the frisson of fear at McCabe’s D.C. car registration was gone. That’s what’s good about shame. It wipes out everything else. “Nothing,” McCabe answered. I stepped on the gas so I wouldn’t have to talk. We flew through a red light at the entrance of Elmira. A Firecop car was soon on our tail. They pulled us over on a side street. Two Firecops got out. The younger one shone a flashlight on my face, then on my hands, which I kept visibly resting on the steering wheel. Even in lowly Elmira, hiding your hands from a Firecop could cost you your life. He swept the back with his flashlight, missing the Mauser on the floor under the blanket. The bullet in the chamber would have been hard to explain. The older Firecop shone his flashlight on the car plates, punching them into his tablet. He asked McCabe for her registration. He swiped it on his device, and the yellow light of the screen bathed his face while he read. Like Ezequiel, he moved his lips while reading. I was about to turn over my driver’s license to the younger Firecop when the older one said sharply that it would not be necessary. He shut down his tablet, returned the license to McCabe, thanked her, touching the brim of his helmet with two fingers, and walked back to the patrol car, followed reluctantly by his younger partner. “It’s Christmas,” McCabe explained to me. She sat back, stretched her long legs, and crossed them at the ankles, as if getting ready for a long trip. Ten minutes later we were back inside the Judge’s garage. McCabe went into the house without a glance at Rafael’s blue sedan.
Rafael was now sleeping on his left side, his back toward the door. How easy it would be for a killer to walk into the room, stand where I was, and blow out his brains with, say, a Finnish Glock 17-Pro fitted with a silencer. They must have ways to bypass the alarm on the garage door. I returned the Mauser to the gun cabinet.
McCabe was sitting at the kitchen table. She asked that we eat in the kitchen, because it smelled so good. It was hard to say no to McCabe. She asked so humbly and was so happy when you said yes. After many trips back and forth, I managed to transfer the beautiful dining-table setting to the kitchen table. The venison was slightly overcooked on the edges, but otherwise excellent. The roasted potatoes were still firm. Lowering the thermostat in the dining room on our way out had kept the appetizers fresh. McCabe ate with relish the stuffed trout, the mushrooms vinaigrette, and the avocado slices; then she attacked the meat with both hands. She soon had that blissful look on her face which I had missed so much. It was almost like old times, except that there was no music. “Tell me a story instead,” she said when I offered to put something on for her. “What about?” I said. “From your book.” Fighting off nausea, I said, “I don’t have a book in me.” She had heard that expression before. It was an odd expression. As if a book was a bodily organ, or a virus, or a fetus. Was that true? “That’s what they say, those who know about these things, those who have had books inside them, or knew someone who did,” I said. I believed them. “But maybe some books were not inside people, but outside,” she replied. Maybe others were not inside your body all the time, but came and went, slowly or suddenly. “People say lots of things that are not true,” she said. “You too?” I jumped in, recklessly. “Yes,” she said. “Me too.” McCabe then dropped her head on her chest. I was afraid that she might begin to cry. I didn’t want her to. She must not. Her grief would be unbearable, I tell her. She says it is unbearable for her, too. Stop it, then, I say. Use your willpower. I kneel in front of her, take her hands and kiss them. She lets me. They’re big, raspy, dry, and repulsive to touch, like the skin of a stuffed reptile. Yet, the overall effect is one of rough beauty, in spite of the large knuckles. Grief makes McCabe quiet and still. It makes her close her eyes and surrender her naked hands. Now that her grief is overflowing, I realize that it has always been there. When she watched the birds, chopped wood, cleaned my feet, obsessively pruned the yellow rosebush, carried armloads of packages to the waiting FedEx truck, even when she or the former inhabitant of her skin boarded a blue sedan in the middle of the night: didn’t that McCabe walk toward the car with hunched shoulders, her chin also buried in her chest? Open your eyes, I say, please, look at me. Her hands are cold. Are you ill? I say. Is she going to faint? Is she dying? Her hands are resting on her knees. I bury my face in her hands. They smell of venison, mushrooms, and, faintly, apples. I’m fine, she says. It’s nothing. I’ve been driving for two days. Don’t worry about me. When I look up, her eyes are open. She’s looking at me, and through me, at the same time. Thanks, she says. I stand up. Sorry, I say. She puts her hands in her pockets. What about some music, she says, too brightly. Good idea, I say. In the Judge’s studio I hesitate between the obvious, the trite, the strident, the maudlin. No music is good or bad enough for this moment. I would have chosen silence. But she wants music, for my sake, not hers. I choose pure joy, the saddest thing in the world. I return to the kitchen and the French horns announce the return of the briefly homesick American to Paris by night. McCabe is smoking a cigarette. Her head rests in her right hand. Her right elbow is propped on the kitchen table. She holds the cigarette with her left hand. She seems to be far away. I did not know that McCabe smoked. I stand on the threshold. “Do you like this music?” I say. “It sounds familiar,” she says from that faraway place. “What is it?” I tell her. She turns around and sees the rifle in my hands, then she looks away. “What else can I do?” I say. “I don’t know,” she says, putting out her cigarette. I load the rifle and pull the trigger. I hear a scream, then a thud, then a gurgle. The rifle butt kicked me hard in the shoulder. A donkey-kick. Good shot. Right between the eyes. McCabe is on the floor, covered in blood, eyes and mouth wide open. Soundless. Frozen. Time stops. Then she howls like she’s being skinned alive. Shows her teeth, bloody, too. Spits blood. Howls and howls and howls like a wolf. She is holding him in her arms. He looks small and dark. I saw him jump in front of her as I was pulling the trigger. I couldn’t stop.